View full sizeAP Photo/Jonathan J. CooperChris Rodgers of Eugene speaks on Aug. 10 about the Citizens Initiative Review process that considered Measure 85.

We agree with backers of Measure 85 on one
thing: The corporate kicker is bad public policy. Because good public policy is the best antidote to bad public policy, however, voters in November should deliver a swift kick of their own to Measure 85.

The corporate income tax kicker is half of a matched set of revenue-reduction mechanisms protected by the Oregon Constitution, the other being the much more substantial personal income tax kicker. From a taxpayer's perspective, both kickers reward bad guessing by budget experts. If collections of either income tax exceed projections by more than 2 percent, then all of the unanticipated money in that pot is returned to taxpayers. Since their creation in the late 1970s, the personal kicker has returned about $2.6 billion to Oregonians, and the corporate kicker has returned about $527 million.

Measure 85 would allow the state to keep the corporate kicker money, ostensibly to provide additional support exclusively for K-12 education. However, there's no guarantee that lawmakers won't spread some of that wealth among other programs supported by the general fund, including corrections, social services and higher education. A 24-member Citizens Initiative Review panel recently concluded unanimously that Measure 85 "does not prevent the redirecting of current funding resources to other non-education budgets." And that's from a group whose majority endorsed the measure.

Measure 85's supporters assert that Oregonians would be very angry if the Legislature ignored the intent of the measure in this fashion, but that's not much of an assurance.

Neither would the measure make education funding more stable, as supporters claim. In fact, it probably would do just the opposite. Over the past 20 years, the corporate kicker has returned money to businesses only three times. Given the chance to keep this unanticipated loot on the r
are occasions it becomes available, lawmakers will simply spend it rather than save it for a severe downturn.

If Measure 85's backers were really interested in enhancing stability, they would have sought to put the corporate kicker in a rainy day fund, much as the Legislature did when it suspended the corporate kicker back in 2007. Why didn't the Measure 85 brigade choose this option? Because, said Liz McCann of Defend Oregon (Our Oregon's campaign arm), tapping a rainy day fund requires a two-thirds vote in the Legislature, and lawmakers might not vote to release the funds as often as Our Oregon's supporters -- primarily public employee unions -- would like.

In other words, Measure 85's supporters want to increase spending, not stability.

What Oregon needs isn't a "solution" like Measure 85, which replaces bad public policy with worse public policy. What Oregon needs,
rather, is an honest look at both its taxing and spending policies, followed by a package of reforms in 2013 designed to make the state's revenue stream more stable and its spending more sustainable. The corporate kicker has to be part of that discussion, as do the personal income tax kicker, the Public Employees Retirement System and a lot of other things.

Removing the corporate kicker from the mix will make it harder for all parties to make a comprehensive deal.

But Measure 85's supporters are less interested in solving Oregon's persistent budgetary problems than they are in grabbing easy money from politically unpopular groups, to which end they've begun to rev up the rhetoric of resentment that characterized the ugly campaigns in support of Measures 66 and 67. Expect to hear plenty in the next couple of months about the "out of state corporations" that have been Hoovering up kicker money that ought to be spent on teachers and schoolchildren.

Then
vote "no" on this and demand that lawmakers address Oregon's revenue and spending problems in 2013.